–by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. Aside from the declines in the April regional Fed reports of general business conditions, there has been no significant fallout in the high frequency data from the tariff trade wars – at least, not yet. As usual, clicking over and reading will bring […]

 – by New Deal democrat I’ll keep today’s report on construction spending brief. The important part of this metric is residential construction spending, another proxy for housing. On a nominal basis, in March residential construction spending (red) declined -0.4%, while total construction spending (blue) declined -0.5%: These are hardly terrible declines. BUT, the price of […]

 – by New Deal democrat My question over the past year had been whether “decleration” into a “soft landing”would turn into “deterioration” towards a recession. That has now been overtaken by events in the form of T—-p‘s tariffs and trade wars. So my focus now is looking for hard data, rather than reports of sentiment, […]

  – by New Deal democrat [Note: I’ll report separately on construction spending, also released this morning] Although manufacturing is of diminishing importance to the economy, (it was in deep contraction both in 2015-16 and again in 2022 without any recession), the ISM manufacturing index remains an important indicator with a 75+ year history of accurately describing […]

 – by New Deal democrat I suspect we will look back on this morning’s report on jobless claims as the first concrete sign of impending recession. Initial claims rose 18,000 to 241,000, the highest since February 22. The four week moving average rose 5,500 to 226,000. With the usual one week lag, continuing claims rose 83,000 […]

 – by New Deal democrat Aside from the long leading indicators I discussed in that post, GDP is a look in the rear view mirror, because it includes January and February. Personal income and spending for March, although it is part of that GDP report, is therefore more current. Like the housing data we got earlier […]

 – by New Deal democrat The big headline takeaway in today’s advance report on Q1 GDP, besides the -0.3% number, was that imports deducted about -5.0% on an annualized basis, overcoming a fairly strong 3.0% contribution in real terms from consumer spending. Here’s the breakout graph from the BEA: The graph tells the story; both real […]

I am not sure if people know what the Jolts Report is. So, I will offer up a descriptive definition; The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) program of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) produces monthly and annual estimates of job openings, hires, and separations for the nation. The JOLTS program also produces monthly state estimates for […]

 – by New Deal democrat Last week I noted that the deceleration in YoY prices in the existing home sales report was indicative of the ongoing rebalancing of the housing market, and I would be looking for confirmation in the repeat home sales reports this week. This morning, we got it. On a seasonally adjusted […]

 – by New Deal democrat This month the economic surveys by the five regional Feds which conduct them – New York, Philly, Richmond, Kansas City, and Dallas – have assumed additional importance as among the likely first warnings of impacts from T—-p’s trade wars.  This morning the last manufacturing survey for the month, from Dallas, was […]